discard124

> But from watching that statement I do both agree with him and believe he is being honest in that specific case.

Yes, and the linked paper shows that this is a reflection of your existing bias about him, and not whether he is being truthful. It means that the clip of Elon tells us nothing at all about why he’s making the statement, even if judged by experts.

I don’t see how Hollywood is evidence of anything. They want their movies to have the widest audience possible, so their movie content is made as inoffensive as possible.

Elon’s cars are not movies.

For a counterexample, Tim Cook praises China, even as reports suggest that Apple and its shareholders are afraid of their dependence on China and are seeking to lessen it.

Elon has never behaved like Hollywood, and has a long history of saying whatever he thinks people want to hear. I see no reason to think that this is any different.

I see nothing combative here, and nobody is forcing you to write replies you don’t want to. I disagree that simply making a naked claim is ‘reasoning’.

“The moon is made of cheese.” is a statement, but isn’t reasoning.

Here’s a link to a book you can’t read: https://www.amazon.com/Views-Moon-Reviews-Mineralogy-Geochem...

I think it’s fairly clear which is more valuable if you want to know about the composition of the moon.

Similarly, the linked book is clearly more valuable than your unsubstantiated statement about US manufacturing.

More likely, the EU will demand that alternative stores be regulated and that override controls exist, precisely so that they can outlaw E2EE and block other apps they want to restrict.

The EU isn’t doing any of this to support some principle of end-user freedom. It’s all just a consequence of lobbying and politics. They aren’t going to do anything that reduces their own control.

> What makes a business have government approval is two things

I see no evidence that you have the expertise to make this claim. It’s just an opinion you are stating as fact.

Actually you didn't provide any reasoning. You just made a statement without any supporting logic.

> No. He can keep silent and still have access to the market.

Can he? Are you an expert on what it takes to gain the Chinese government's approval, or the continuing goodwill needed for massive capital projects?

> If Europe demands that SMS apps have a backdoor (fancy that), Apple users would have options that aren't provided by Apple.

This makes no sense. If Europe makes rules about backdoors or outlawing E2E, they will apply to every app store and every app, not just Apple.

Have you considered that they might have a reason for that? You act as if control has no value to their mission.

Controlling the platform allows them to continue to evolve it while maintaining the convenient and spam-free user experience that users enjoy.

Or he’s just saying what he needs to say to negotiate access to the market.

How about you go first. You didn’t even provide a book recommendation to support your claim.

Then is seems like you do understand why Signal isn’t as open as you’d like.

> To become something attainable in practice we would have to start supporting the companies that are focused on the more important things first until they are mature enough to be able to dedicate time and resources to optimize for convenience.

What happened to open source?

> The problem is that when we prize convenience above other things and we end up with stupid things like customers arguing about the color of their speech bubbles.

That’s a fair point, in that if consumers prioritized open infrastructure over convenience, a commercial enterprise would too. However this is back to the earlier point - there is no point railing about that. It’s just a fact that most people want to just buy the nicest thing they can with their money.

> "someone else in the OSS space to put in the work" to make it as convenient as the leading closed alternatives, which is a fool's errand.

I don’t think I got you wrong at all - you’ve just reiterated that it isn’t as convenient, and can’t be made so.

> Why can't that Best Buy rep be trained to setup Element instead?

No reason. If some organization was willing to pay Best Buy to do that, I’m expect they would.

With all due respect, it seems that you have conceded that a convenient, spam free, open option not only doesn’t exist in practice, but can’t in principle.

That’s more than even I believe. I just think nobody in the OSS space has put the work in to figure it out yet.

> I could get my parents who are nearing their 70s to use Element (Matrix) and it took them less than 10 minutes, even with me asking them to register to a non-default homeserver.

Well in that case Element would be the solution we’re looking for, except that not everyone’s parents have someone like you to help them.

And as for the desire for convenience, it’s hard to imagine you seriously believe that only Americans value convenience over resilience. If that were true, the rest of the world would be using Element rather than WhatsApp.

Simply railing against people’s needs doesn’t change them.

> They should have been drafting absurd standards centered around their own servers, and taunting Google into adopting it.

It's hard to imaging you sincerely think this would have been better. It seems like you want them to engage in dishonesty.

> But instead they played high and mighty, and now they have to contend with the law.

iMessage isn't going anywhere. They're just going to add RCS support in the same way that SMS is supported, because now there is momementum for carrier support. This is really a storm in a teacup.

> open it up to let other people run their own servers instead of trying to control everything.

If you know of a good open architecture that solves the problems of spam and impersonation while maintaining the convenience and ease of use necessary for mass adoption, please share it.

The British people who did that are dead now.

Good point about the co-worker reading HN.

Honestly, if the poster is serious about being a professional manager and wants good advice on this, they should reach out to a professional organization that provides resources e.g.:

https://www.neurodiversityhub.org/resources-for-employers

Using anecdotes from HN as a guide doesn’t seem like a great approach.

That seems absurdly onerous for indie devs. I hope Apple doesn’t do anything as extreme.

You need to give more info about what the actual problems are. Without knowing that, people can only offer advice based on stereotypes, which are often innaccurate.

I do.